


My Secret Friend

by hobbitdragon



Series: Witcher Fics [11]
Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Guardian Angels, Horror, Love, M/M, Monsters, Near Death Experiences, Other, Spirits
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-12 09:48:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29008557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hobbitdragon/pseuds/hobbitdragon
Summary: There has been something following Geralt for a long, long time. Maybe it's Death, walking close in his wake. Maybe it's Destiny, marking him as its own. All Geralt knows is that he cannot escape the huge, dark, faceless thing.
Series: Witcher Fics [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1731811
Comments: 25
Kudos: 15





	1. The Trial of the Grasses

**Author's Note:**

> So I've been listening to The Magnus Archives. For those who don't know, it's a really amazing horror podcast. Horror isn't normally my thing, and it still isn't really, because I'm just too Soft for it. This fic is how my brain responds to horror: I take a scary idea and make it soft. 
> 
> I don't have this fic fully plotted out yet, but it'll loosely follow the plot of the books/games. I'll post chapters whenever I finish one, so if consistent updates are your thing, this fic may not be for you while it's in progress.
> 
> The title of this fic is from the song of the same name by IAMX. There are two versions of it I like, which you can listen to [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4A2ZQl4IQV4) and [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J36tKHyDpEw). They make a good soundtrack for this fic.

The first time Geralt saw it was when one of the mages, a tall, spindly sorcerer named Cavendro, was strapping him down to the transformation tables. Geralt hadn’t been able to hide the way he was shaking, and Cavendro had snorted and said with a sly smile that it would all be over soon, one way or another. Cavendro had finished buckling the leather straps into place along Geralt’s wrists, ankles, arms, and thighs, and had turned away to get the potions and vanished out of Geralt’s view. 

Geralt had been staring fixedly at the ceiling when he saw a tall figure move into the edge of his vision. He assumed it was just Cavendro again and dismissed it, closing his eyes to pray to any god that would listen to spare Eskel, at least. Eskel was strapped to the table beside Geralt and they’d already started on him--Geralt couldn’t look at what was happening to him, couldn’t make himself look, but he could hear Eskel screaming. 

Geralt had been trying to remember how prayers worked. He remembered dimly that you were supposed to ask gods for help in a particular way--offer them something in return, maybe?--when he realized that Cavendro hadn’t been wearing black. He was wearing robes of a light reddish rusty brown, and the figure in Geralt had just seen had been wearing all black. 

When Geralt turned to look, thinking it was another mage who had come in...his mind didn’t know what to do at the sight of it. There was something there, something tall and dark. There was something like a hood, and from this angle below it, Geralt should have been able to see up into its face. But there was nothing there. Or...not nothing, perhaps. A darkness in which Geralt could _see_ nothing. 

At once Geralt understood what this was. The gods had understood his plea, even if he hadn’t found the proper words: they would take his life in exchange for Eskel’s. 

Geralt closed his eyes again. He had wanted to become a witcher--he had wanted to save people, and to prove that he could be good and kind. But if this was how Geralt did his service a witcher, in giving himself to spare Eskel, then so be it. 

Geralt opened his eyes again and looked up at Death. It set a long, sharp hand upon the edge of the iron slats. It watched as the mages cut open the veins of Geralt’s arm, inserted the tube, and Geralt's world went white with agony. 

**

But when Geralt awoke again, days later, the figure was still there, and they told him that Eskel was alive and recovering elsewhere. The mages felt Geralt’s belly, peered into his eyes, and discussed in some surprise how lucid he seemed to be. 

“One of the best results I’ve seen in a long time. Perfect pupil contraction, and he’s had that since day two,” Cavendro said with narrowed eyes, then sat Geralt on the edge of a bench and tested his knees. His feet sprang up when his knees were struck gently, and his body responded in all the other expected ways too. 

But Geralt was watching that dark figure. It watched him back from across the room. He couldn’t really make out its body because he couldn’t look directly at it for long without his eyes watering, and the mages kept telling him to stop crying because it was over now. But the thing across the room was...long. Perhaps it had a great, dark, curling tail, or perhaps that was just the trailing of its robes. Or perhaps that was dark, trailing skin? It had no eyes that he could see, just as it had no face, but he could tell that it was looking at him. 

He didn’t know what it was anymore. He had believed it to be Death, come to take him in Eskel’s place, but now--when he asked the mages again if Eskel was alive, they told him impatiently that he could go to see Eskel as soon as they were finished with their blasted work, and the sooner he stopped interfering, the sooner he would be allowed. 

If Eskel wasn’t dead, then why was Death lingering here for Geralt?

Six weeks passed, in which the mages told Geralt that he had exceeded all their expectations of how children responded to the Trials. During that time, Geralt over and over again saw Death, or whatever it was, lingering at the edges of his vision watching him. It was there in the shadows of the stone walls in the training yard as the trainees practiced with their blunted swords. It was there in among the threes on the path down from the gates of Kaer Morhen as they ran to and from the lake. It was there in the furthest corner of the new bedroom given to him and Eskel as graduates of the Trial of the Grasses.

Nobody else could see it, that much was plain, not even the mages. Geralt somehow knew better than to ask anyone else about it. He could tell that it was here for him. 

At seven weeks after his Trial of the Grasses, when the mages told Geralt that he would be undergoing a second set of mutations, Geralt thought that he at last understood. Death had just been delayed a little while, and he would die this time. The mages would kill him this time. 

The night before his second Trial, Geralt tucked himself into Eskel's bed without asking. Eskel didn't protest. 

Geralt knew this would be his last night. The dark shape had come right up to the bedside, settling itself there just past Eskel’s shoulder. If Eskel had rolled over and cast his arm out, he would have touched the thing.  It was so big that it filled most of the space of the room and almost touched the ceiling. Even so, Geralt still couldn’t seem to look at it directly or make out its details.

“Eskel,” Geralt whispered. He was used to keeping his voice down from so many years of the communal dormitory. He wondered who they’d put in here with Eskel once Geralt himself was dead. “Eskel, I...I don’t think I’ll survive tomorrow.”

At this, Eskel turned over in bed and shook his head, covering Geralt’s mouth with his fingertips. “Don’t say things like that, it’s bad luck.”

But Geralt grasped Eskel’s hand in his, looking past him to the dark figure that watched them both. 

“This is the last time I’m going to see you,” he told Eskel, the words intense. “I’m going to die this time. I just wanted you to know that--” 

Eskel shook his head again, sitting up and turning away as if to refuse to hear it. He should have been looking right at the thing, should have seen it filling up the room, but he saw nothing. 

“--that I’m glad I’ve met you. I’m glad we were here together. You’ll be a wonderful witcher someday, I know it,” Geralt finished.

“No,” Eskel refused him, smacking his hands down on his own thighs. “No, don't be stupid! You won’t die. You survived the first time better than anyone else, right? Destiny’s touched you! Why would you come through once so well just to die, that doesn't make sense!”

“I just know,” Geralt told him, because Death was close to him. Close to them both. And it was better if it was Geralt than Eskel, who deserved to grow up strong and be a good witcher someday. “I just know, Eskel. I’m going to die tomorrow.”

At this Eskel fell silent. For several moments he was still, then he punched the bed, grabbed his pillow and punched that too, and then covered his face with his hands. 

Geralt wanted to comfort him but didn’t know how. What could he say? That it was his life or Eskel’s and Geralt was at least happy that Eskel got to live? That was an awful thing to tell someone. 

He let Eskel pull him down against the bed and hold him close. And when Eskel sniffled and wiped at his eyes, Geralt politely didn’t comment and just let him cry.

The dark figure watched over them both, and followed Geralt the next day as he went through the halls up to where the mages had again readied things for him. It watched him as they cut his veins again, and when he started screaming. It was the last thing Geralt saw when all he could hear was his own failing heartbeat and his eyes went dim and he could see nothing but that huge dark shape bent over him, welcoming him into its arms. 

  
  
  
  


When Geralt awoke again days later, he searched the room for the dark shape and saw nothing. 

He didn’t understand what this meant. 


	2. The Trial of the Medallion

The second time Geralt saw it was during the Trial of the Medallion. Everyone had heard the nightmare stories about Old Speartip, but it wasn’t just the massive cyclops that the trainees had to watch out for. There were foglets up in the north of the valley, strong ones, able to emulate the look and sound of humans until you got right up close to them. There were trolls, too, a whole family of them, and sometimes nekkers and forktails and even a leshen. 

But that was the _point,_ of course. All of those creatures were ones which they might be called upon to kill once they were on the Path. If they could not face such obstacles, then they would never survive the Path. 

Eskel and the others of their year had already long since set out, and some of the first to leave had already returned, smiling in relief. Their delight had given Geralt some measure of strength, but the extended wait for his own turn had worn upon him. Geralt was the last to go, released from the watchful eyes of the teachers into the woods. 

He had made it up to the far north of the lake by following the footsteps of the boys before him. He had just taken his dose of Cat and stepped into the darkness of the cave when he saw...it. 

There, further inside the cave right where he needed to go, loomed a towering dark shape which Geralt immediately recognized. His blood ran cold, gooseflesh rippling across his skin in an icy wave. 

Would he die here, then? Was its presence a sign he wasn’t fit for the Path? 

His hand twitched into a reflexive Quen. Ears pricked for any sounds beyond his own breathing, Geralt had to force himself to move closer to that silent looming shape. He wanted to keep his eye on that grim presence, but his gaze slid away from it every time, unable to look at it directly. 

It seemed to...wait for him. It stood atop a small rock-face he had to scale, and he climbed up nearly at its feet. Or what might have been its feet, if indeed it had any. 

He passed within a hands-breadth of it, flinching away from the dread proximity and fearing every moment that it would attack. But it did nothing, hooded and eyeless head merely rotating to watch him. 

He thought that might be the end of it, that he’d leave it behind. He clambered onward. But when he looked back, he saw it trailing after him, gliding soundless over the surfaces, even vertical ones. The long curling trail of it was almost serpentine as it slunk along in his wake. With nothing else to do, Geralt went onward, deeper into the cave.

He heard Old Speartip long before he laid eyes on the massive cyclops. It lay in a nest of tree branches, moss, goatskin and other detritus. The fetid stench of rotting meat filled the air. Flies buzzed in the reek. 

Holding his breath both to spare his nose and so he wouldn't make noise, Geralt chose every step carefully. Bones lay scattered on the ground here. Some of them might well have belonged to Cedric from the cohort two years ago. Or Tancred from a year before that. And if the Reaper was here, then...

Somehow Geralt missed his footing, the sole of his boot slipping into a puddle with a small splash. The cyclops, probably already on guard even in his sleep from the smell of humans in his lair, shifted, snore interrupted with a sudden intake of breath. 

Just as Geralt reached for his sword, the _thing,_ the specter, flowed past him into the cave. The seemed almost to...swell, filling the space, the trailing shreds of it clinging to every rock and crevice. From behind it, or through it, Geralt saw Old Speartip move.

Geralt did not wait to see more. He ran. He kept his footfalls light, or as light as he could, sprinting through that charnel place toward where fresher air flowed in. He didn’t see what the specter did, or the cyclops, but he heard a horrible noise like giant lungs moaning in terror. 

What upon the green earth could frighten something like Old Speartip? What  _ was _ the thing following Geralt?

When Geralt emerged into the sharp spring air, it was almost a relief to see something as prosaic as the rock troll which sat peeling the bark from a tree near the exit to the cave. It narrowed its beady little eyes at him. It was already grumpy--that much was clear from its peevish tone and the way it thumped the earth as it told him to leave. When it seemed likely to throw something at him, a quick Axii allowed Geralt to continue on his way unimpeded.

He soon found the other trolls. One look at what they were doing immediately reminded him that it was their mating season. He crept around them, hiding in the trees and trying not to think too hard about the massive, bizarre genitals he’d glimpsed. He hadn't realized what a difference it made to see a thing in the flesh, as it were, as opposed to in a simple illustration in a bestiary.

However amusing he imagined the story would be once he told Eskel about it tonight, his mirth vanished when he saw the specter waiting for him near the altar. Its shadowy wisps spread out into the shadows between a trio of pines. 

Again Geralt could do nothing except pass by it. Again it merely watched him as he laid the inert medallion upon the altar and then lit the ritual fires, one for each of the elements. The specter sat, brooding in the growing darkness of the sunset, as Geralt knelt before the altar. 

When the medallion started to tremble and rattle on the stone, he knew it was ready. It hummed in his hand just as he’d been told to expect, responding to the power of this place. 

He retreated down the mountainside toward Kaer Morhen. The faceless shape watched him go. Geralt’s medallion stilled the farther away he got, but was that because he was away from the Circle, or because he was away from...it?

The longer he walked into the valley, the more shaky Geralt became, until at last he had to sit down beside a tree just before his knees gave out. He let the shivers take him. 

_ He’d passed the Trial of the Medallion.  _ Assuming he didn’t somehow manage to die by encountering some monster between here and the fortress, he was now a full witcher. Which meant that soon, the next step would be to leave Kaer Morhen and set out upon the Path. Which meant leaving Eskel and all his friends behind for months or years and facing humans as the mutated creature he was.

He and the other boys had, of course, maintained working relationships with the various human staff who helped keep Kaer Morhen running, and they'd all been sent down to the local village and trading outpost on supply runs. But the people in the village were used to seeing witchers of all ages and had a healthy respect for the mutants who bought most of their goods and made what would otherwise have been a hard life on a bitter mountainside into a profitable stop for trade caravans year-round. 

But every time there was a human newcomer to Kaer Morhen--some of the older boys brought to train, or men cast from their homes for being caught with another of their sex, or women pregnant out of wedlock and disowned, all the outcasts unwanted elsewhere--Geralt had seen them be at first afraid and suspicious of their witcher hosts. He had asked them why, and heard the stories told of witchers: that they were rapists and madmen, unfeeling monsters who'd eat the children they took. 

So Geralt knew what kind of reception awaited him out in the world. 

And now he was seeing things. Or haunted in some way. 

He had been able to dismiss his first sighting as the symptom of a young and terrified mind. Theoretically _this_ sighting might also be dismissable in such a way, but...but the difference between ten years old and eighteen was significant. He wasn’t the same stupid kid he had been then. 

So his mind ran through the possibilities. It couldn’t be any sort of wraith, those were bound to places and objects, often their own bones. If it had been a wraith, it couldn’t have followed him from Kaer Morhen to the Circle of Elements. The greatest known range for a wraith from its remains was perhaps a hundred yards. 

A hym, perhaps? But Geralt wasn’t feeling guilty, at least he didn’t think so, because as far as he knew he hadn’t done anything monstrous. Or, well, nothing grave enough to merit a hym’s attention. He had, of course, engaged in his fair share of pranks gone wrong that led to tears or fighting, but he couldn’t quite convince himself that such things, stupid and hurtful as they might have been, could cause this. And hyms only manifested in shadows, while this thing...this thing had appeared for the first time in the brightly-lit rooms where the mages worked. 

Several other similar possibilities were considered and dismissed as Geralt sat curled up with one hand on his knife and the other pressed hard to his mouth as the tremors went through him. 

It had seemed almost like it was...protecting him. It had gotten between him and Old Speartip. 

Maybe it was all just a hallucination brought on by stress. Maybe he needed to just accept that.

But that was an almost equally frightening thought. How could a witcher with an untrustworthy mind possibly survive the Path?

When Geralt finally managed to get to his feet and continue on his way, his clothes damp with sweat where they were closest to his skin, he considered telling someone what he’d seen. One of the instructors, perhaps. 

But no--if they thought he was seeing things, they might...they might consider his additional mutations a failed experiment. The mages might kill him for that. He had seen boys die when they’d gone off into fits of rage or self-harm, cut down by the instructors to keep the other boys safe, or put out of their misery to end their suffering. 

No. If something was wrong with Geralt’s mind and it meant he’d die on the Path, then at least that way he might be able to help someone before he went.  So he couldn’t tell anyone that he was seeing things. Not if he wanted all these years of training to mean anything at all. 


End file.
